Administrative Leave

The board meeting lasts eleven minutes. You lay out everything—the drawings, the 1987 case study, Dr. Hale's testimony—and watch their expressions cycle from polite concern to quiet consultation. The chief of medicine uses the word burnout twice. By the time you reach the parking garage, your badge no longer works.

That night, your phone rings. Blocked number. You answer, and there is no voice—only the soft, relentless sound of pencil on paper, scratching in long, deliberate strokes, filling some invisible page that never seems to run out of room.